Monday, May 16, 2011

Anonymous writes:

Yet you argue morally....I am confused, very confused. 
 This is is response to my raising concerns about the political project to reform individuals morally behind Raymond Hain's defence of the new urbanist walkable community.

Okay, it's just a sloppy argument made by some wandering troll. But let's take it seriously. Why would it be that some kinds of moral arguments are oppressive and others not? Because that is the problem that is confusing poor old anonymous. How dare I criticize someone else for pushing an oppressive moral agenda when I argue morally. If I make an argument that people should do X or that they should not do Y, isn't that just the same as some like Hain saying:
... we must promote building patterns that will help these various small-scale human communities to flourish and make virtuous action possible.
 Is the difference in the "we"? No. If Joe runs around with a gun robbing banks then it is up to the rest of us to put some major moral oppression on Joe. We do it through the agency of the police but it is our determination that makes it. This can be overdone of course.

But the particularly dangerous kind of moral oppression, in my view, is the stuff done with the purported goal of encouraging other people's happiness. I say purported, because projects like the new urbanism have far broader goals than they reveal. This is nothing less than a remaking of the culture.

And it's not a rare or unusual thing. Everywhere you look, you can find people with projects that would focus all the tools available to the state into remaking our culture in the name of happiness or to avert some supposedly crushing disaster that will befall us if we don't act right now.

2 comments:

  1. I guess one thing that I was thinking throughout your series on Hahn was that Hahn wasn't pushing for regulations instead of nothing, but for alternate regulations. To put it another way, there are already laws, regulations, preexisting conditions, etc, that affect the way we live. Seen from this angle, I think Hahn's suggestions seem less invasive.

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  2. It's not the regulations I find invasive. Obviously, regulations can be too invasive but usually they aren't.

    No, it;'s the nature of the project that bothers me: he wants to governments to act in a way that encourage the development of a certain way of living. If God really did endow us with rights to love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then Hain seems to be setting his sights on the last of these.

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